Ethnos Training

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Ethnos Training

Since 1968, our passion is to train men and women to plant churches among unreached people groups.

Emanate is Ethnos Canada’s training program for believers interested in church planting among unreached people groups. At Emanate, students are equipped as part of a community that is committed to sacrifice, excellence and urgency for the Gospel. Teaching from field-proven theory, our trainers have been there and teach from firsthand experience. http://emanatetraining.ca/
https://ethnos.ca/
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05/12/2025

"Some of the best food I've ever eaten is in Jungle Camp."

When our missionary candidates are building their houses in Jungle Camp, one of the most important elements that they will spend a large chunk of time on is: their Jungle Camp stove!

Our students had to decide both where and how they are going to build their stoves/ovens in their homes. These ovens are made out of a wooden chair filled with a dirt and clay surrounding a metal frame. Everyday, when our students need to warm up their food, or even make coffee, they will need to start a fire in their ovens. This, of course, will be more time-consuming then simply throwing their food in the microwave to warm it up.

Overseas, missionaries may not the same amenities than they are used having. Jungle Camp teaches missionary candidates adapt to new ways of living. For the rest of their lives, they will be learning how to adapt to the "new".

Pray for our students in their last weeks leading up to JC in their preparation for building and adjustments to their lives while living in there!

Did you know that while we are in Jungle Camp, there are is an open house day? Come out and visit us July 5, 2025! See the houses that we have built and be exposed to some of the realities of living in an isolated context! For more information and to sign up, see https://ethnos.ca/campus-open-house/

05/09/2025

If you don't have enough electricity to have a refrigerator or freezer to keep your food from spoiling, and no access to a grocery store, what would you do?

This is exactly the situation we will be in during our time in Jungle Camp: four weeks with no refrigerator or freezer, in isolation without access to a store! Our answer - canned food. Our students, for a few weeks now, have been preparing meals for jungle camp by canning meat, vegetables, pie filling - whatever you could want in jungle camp, we are canning!

This skill is helpful for our Jungle Camp practicum, but can be very practical overseas if our future ministry takes us to a similar situation, with no access to a store for weeks at a time, and possibly no fridge or freezer.

Did you know that while we are in Jungle camp, there are is an open house day? Come out and visit us July 5, 2025! See the houses that we have built and be exposed to some of the realities of living in an isolated context! For more information and to sign up, see https://ethnos.ca/campus-open-house/

05/05/2025

Jungle Camp Open House Dates

Every summer, our missionary candidates have 10 days to build a home in the bush. Then, they live in their home for 4 weeks as a part of a learning practicum that teaches them many skills needed when church planting in a remote and isolated people group - such as adaptability, coping with isolation, teamwork, etc.

There are two days when the public can come and see the houses they have been living in and see what they are learning during their time both in Jungle Camp and in the rest of the training.

If you are interested in learning about these days that you could come and visit, see the following links:

Kids Open House: https://ethnos.ca/kids-open-house/
Campus Open House: https://ethnos.ca/campus-open-house/

You can use these links learn more information and to register to come see our students and here their stories!

04/08/2025

What is the world's greatest need?

What greater need is there than for all people to hear the message of the gospel? There isn't one! God wants everyone to hear this message, but bringing the gospel to the ends of the earth comes with substantial hurdles, including: language, culture, and geographical barriers.

Culture Encounter is 4-hour event to expose students in grades 7-12 to God's heart of reaching the whole world with His life-saving message, the realities of cross-cultural missions, and the incredible responsibility that God has given to all believers.

If you are interested in learning more about this event, see:
https://ethnos.ca/go/mission-trips/culture-encounter/

There are still dates available in April (12th and 15th) if you are interested in bringing your kids and attending this program! Be involved in this opportunity to see the work that the Lord is doing in the world and how you can be a part of it!

04/04/2025

Another Milestone!

As a class, we come to yet another milestone in the training. March break, our last long break until the end of this semester, after Jungle Camp, just passed and we are two weeks into our semester!

Looking to the busy months ahead filled with planning and preparing for Jungle Camp, continuing in our language training (Phonetics, Phonemics, Grammar), and more cross-cultural church planting classes, we look forward and know that it is only from the Lord that we will find our strength and endurance to get through this season. And yet, we look ahead with anticipation for the rest of this semester. We are so excited for what the Lord has in store for us over these months. He has showed us time and time again that He is faithfully teaching us much through the training and it only makes us that much more encouraged as we continue.

Before the break, we finished up some core courses. We finished up our Phonetics course, which prepared us to hear, reproduce, and write down sounds very different from those in our native languages. We are now embarking on Phonemics, which will focus on the process that takes place when developing a written alphabet for a language that has never been written before. We often take for granted the fact that we have the scriptures so accessible to us, in hundreds of versions in English, and yet some languages do not even have one! It makes the work that much more necessary! We also have finished our classes on Animism and Folk-Religions, which help us to understand barriers that may hinder us from presenting the gospel in a tribal context. We are also starting a new series of courses that prepare us for life in ministry - to equip us for how to not only prepare ourselves, but also how to prepare our children and our families.

Please pray for our class as we begin the next portion of our training - for strength and endurance, to keep our minds and eyes fixed on Christ and the work that is ahead of us!

03/21/2025

Shane Whatley, one of our trainers at Ethnos Canada campus who is training future missionaries for cross-cultural church planting, grew up overseas and served with his wife, Karen, in Asia Pacific. They had to return to North America due to health concerns, but the burden on their hearts for reaching the unreached remained. Shane and Karen joined the team in Durham to train up the next generation of missionaries.

The two of them have served in various roles on the campus. Collectively, some roles that they have had are discipling students and meeting regularly with them; coordinating the logistics and scheduling on the Academic Coordinating Team; and playing a huge role in the Jungle Camp summer practicum. Shane also teaches various classes to the students and is directly involved in skills related to the third-semester Culture/Language Acquisition Practicum. Shane is also on the training leadership team. Karen has worked with the communications between the training and incoming students; she also maintains the campus’ certification, allowing the training to receive international students.

In many ways, they have helped many fields around the world by training families before they head to the field. It is an encouragement to our students to learn from others who grew up among the unreached and spent years serving overseas. Much of that time serving was spent orienting new missionaries and overseeing their first years on the field, so they have had the privilege of equipping workers before and after heading overseas.

Shane and Karen are truly a blessing and an asset to have on the training team! They bring a joy to the training and work hard to see the students thrive; they are a huge support and great encouragement! Their lives have been a testimony of great faith that the Lord is holding them in the palm of His hands. Their willingness to follow God through every mountain and valley has been incredible to watch first-hand. We are so thankful for people like these two who have dedicated their lives proclaiming God’s message to all nations.

03/04/2025

This winter season has been an unbelievable one. The amount of snow that we have gotten has been quite a sight. Our missionaries and missionaries-in-training on campus have spent 45 mornings (and counting) shovelling the copious amounts of snow early in the mornings. This has made for long days, and quite a lot of physical labour, but many hands make light work. Not only has this made for shovelling early mornings, but there has also been odd jobs of:

- shoveling snow off of roofs,
- shaving the ice off of the sidewalks,
- helping move snowbanks that are too high around residential homes and
- removing the snow off of the rink.

Both staff and students have been working together to keep the campus safe and clear as the snow continues to fall.

Praise the Lord for the many hands contributing to keep the campus functioning! It has been a blessing to have shovelled sidewalks, plowed roads, and cleared roofs — all things we can often take for granted!

life

02/10/2025

Jeremy and Kimberly Wardlaw - West Africa

Jeremy and Kimberly Wardlaw graduated from our training in December 2017. They are currently serving the Lord in West Africa - with their two daughters - studying an indigenous culture and language so that they will be able to effectively communicate the gospel. People in the village have been gracious to take time to help them with both learning the language and also with "growing in cultural understanding" in the village's worldview.

This past month, they helped host a Literacy Workshop to aid in the work of getting God's Word into the heart language of these people. They were able to complete 5 primers, 5 readers, a pre-literacy booklet, and they were able to translate a rough draft of a teacher's manual. Their team hopes to start teaching literacy in the community soon.

Praise the Lord that He continues to open doors for this team!

Please pray for this family as they continue their work, living and serving among these people! Pray for God to continue to prepare the hearts of the people in this village! And pray that the Lord would continue to equip this team in their ministry, and as doors open, be able to translate and teach the Scriptures in the future!

01/31/2025

God's Provision of Food

This past week, the Lord provided food for our class. A campus friend reached out and asked if we would want to help/learn to butcher pigs with them, and we would take home the meat that we butchered. From 2pm to 7pm our class butchered three pigs and an elk - learning skills of how to butcher the meat, how to weigh and grind it, how to make it into different cuts.

This is both a very practical skill that can be used on many fields, but it is also such a blessing from the Lord. It's times like these that we remember, yes, the Lord is watching over us, and He cares for His children. Each family/pair in the training class took home a cooler worth of meat home - equaling to about 500 pounds of meat overall. Praise the Lord that He provided for us in this way!

How has God provided for you this week? It may be something you think is so small, but just enough to remind you that the Lord has got you in His hands. Or it may be something as big as 500 pounds of meat for a little class training to serve the Lord. In whatever way He provides, remember that He loves you, He is watching over you, and He loves to bless us and get the glory in it!

01/29/2025

Various students that have come through our training at Ethnos Canada have been impacted by Encounter.

One of our missionary candidates currently in the training, Connor Goddard, felt his heart soften to missions when he went on an Encounter trip to West Brazil for two weeks in July 2022 - between his first and second year of Bible school. On this Encounter trip, many young adults helped on a missionary school campus to lead conferences that gave missions exposure to the needs that were right there in Brazil. People from all over Brazil came to get exposed to the great need that there is and how they can be a part of reaching their own people. Connor says that the Encounter trip "stirred my heart to see first-hand the need, and not just to hear about it". What a blessing it is that exposure to the great need and trips like this can be a way that the Lord is tugging at the heart!

If you are interested in learning more about Encounter go visit https://ethnos360.org/short-term-trips/encounter
There are four upcoming trips to: Mexico, the Philippians, Southeast Africa, and Brazil. You can apply on the website, or look around to see other times and locations for more Encounter trips. Be exposed to the great need that there is! Let the Lord work in your heart for how He would like you to be a part of His work world-wide.

01/13/2025

Missionary Candidates Jump into New Semester

There is much excitement for what this new semester has in store for our 11 students! Though all of our students were grateful for a break over the holidays, we are all ready to get back into the swing of our semester!

Classes such as Phonetics, Phonemics, Structures of Communication, Folk Religion, New Testament Church Principles, Life in Ministry, and many more foundational classes lie ahead to prepare our students for a life of cross-cultural church planting.

This semester will end with a practicum called “Jungle Camp”, where our students will build their own houses, and live in them for four weeks (with their children), to learn simple living skills, and to be isolated from communication with friends and family outside of their classmates. They will learn many other skills, such as learning flexibility, adaptability, teamwork, managing stress, and much more!

Though a long semester lies ahead, spanning from January to July, with many challenges, what a joy it is to be a part of furthering God’s kingdom! What a joy it is to become better equipped to bring the gospel to those who have never heard it!

We look forward to the semester ahead, and we look forward to getting to share bits and pieces with you!

If you are interested in more information on the missionary training, reach out to us: ethnostraining.ca - or better yet, come visit, sit in on classes, and meet our instructors and students! We would love to have you! Email [email protected] to schedule your visit!

12/16/2024

Last week, our training students graduated. For one of our students, Riryn, this was the first time she has been away from her home country.

Riryn says, "God has taught me to only rely on Him. My family is far away, I don't own anything here, the culture and language are different and it's easy to feel lonely. It will probably get harder on the field, but God taught me that I can and should rely on Him. He is never far and He will give me the strength to do His work. I am His and nothing can separate me from Him. (Romans 8:35-39)"

God has been directing her to Ethnos' advanced linguistics course in the USA before returning back home.

Please continue to pray for Riryn as she takes these steps of faith!

Address

313363 Highway 6 South
Durham, ON
N0G1R0

Telephone

+15193692622

Website

http://www.ethnostraining.ca/

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